05 February 2013

Michigan Union Tell-All

A memo shows how unions hope to keep coercing worker dues.

By the WSJ

When Michigan became the 24th right-to-work state late last year,
everyone knew unions would try to overturn or otherwise neuter the law.
Less expected was that they would do so at the expense of their own
members.

That's the message from a December
27-28 memo to local union presidents and board members from Michigan
Education Association President Steven Cook, which recommends tactics
that unions can use to dilute the impact of the right-to-work law. One
bright idea is to renegotiate contracts now to lock teachers into paying
union dues after the right-to-work law goes into effect in March.
Another is to sue their own members who try to leave.

"Members who indicate they wish to
resign membership in March, or whenever, will be told they can only do
so in August," Mr. Cook writes in the three-page memo obtained by the
West Michigan Policy Forum. "We will use any legal means at our disposal
to collect the dues owed under signed membership forms from any members
who withhold dues prior to terminating their membership in August for
the following fiscal year." Got that, comrade?

Also watch for contract negotiations in which union reps sign up
members for smaller pay raises and benefits in exchange for a long-term
contract. "We've looked carefully at this and believe the impact of RTW
[right to work] can be blunted through bargaining strategies," Mr. Cook
writes.

The union filed its inevitable lawsuit
against the law last week. But in his memo, Mr. Cook admits this is a
long shot, as is a challenge based on technicalities like the law's
carve-out for police and fire fighters. "Because of wording contained in
the Act," Mr. Cook writes, "challenging the carve out might not strike
down the Act but could merely put police and fire into the same RTW pit
the rest of us are in."

Unions may have learned from last year's
meltdown in Wisconsin over Governor Scott Walker's reforms. While Big
Labor waged an unrelenting campaign to overturn the law in court and to
recall Mr. Walker and Wisconsin legislators, there has been little
serious discussion of a similar effort against Governor Rick Snyder in
Michigan. "If the goal is to undo RTW, this is the least appealing of
the options," Mr. Cook writes of potential recalls.

The pattern in new right-to-work states is that union membership
plunges when it is voluntary. That's what happened in Wisconsin and
Indiana, and it will probably happen in Michigan too.

Yet the most revealing news in the Cook memo is how little the union
discusses assisting workers so more will voluntarily join unions.
Instead the focus is how to continue coercing workers to keep
paying dues. No wonder that the percentage of government workers who
belong to unions fell last year. The Cook memo is damning proof that the
main goal of union leaders is to enhance the power of union leaders,
not of workers.